


now i might have went and said too much

by reinacadeea



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Explicit mentions of self-harm, M/M, affair aftermath, but he's also good and i love him, he's bad to the bone, mentioned child abuse, robert went there, so much drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinacadeea/pseuds/reinacadeea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>at the cusp of summer, aaron meets a woman at the side of the road</p><p>alternatively, rebecca white brings trouble</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is part one of two. beta'ed by the lovely erinn (foreverrhapsody). she functioned not only as beta, but as a cheerleader! thank you, lovely. 
> 
> i wrote this before school picked up pace and part two is not done. i wanted to get this out since i wasn't able to finish my robron-in-barcelona!fic i wanted to write. that is also a work in progress. 
> 
> hope you enjoy the high drama!
> 
> love sydney

Part 1 (15-3-16)

\--

Chrissie watches the calm sunrise with a feeling of insignificance, of trepidation and awe, and wants nothing more than to explain how her life has changed so irrevocably in such a short span of time. The birds are chirping, the summer bringing life to the countryside in a way she has not experienced since the last time she lived on a farm further south. Mum had been alive then, wasting away while the chemo ate her strength and Chrissie and her sister watched and worried. 

When her dad sold the house, she was ready to leave the countryside and forget herself in the bustle of a city and later beauty school. That was then, but she loves Home Farm and its surroundings. She loves the quiet and yet the life that lives on the open fields. 

The tea in her hand keeps her warm from the early morning chill along with a plaid blanket her mum made when she was little. 

A year ago, she would not have been alone here. Robert was always restless in the mornings, always ready to face the day and its occupants. Ready to get away from her, she remembers with the bitterness she always feels when she thinks of her former husband. She does miss him though and the humour he brought to her life. Everything is so dull now and no matter how much she tries to hate every single thing about him, she can’t. He would have told her a dirty joke last year or had an arm slung around the back of her chair while he read the news on his iPad. 

They were married then and had done simple things like share a brew in the morning. 

She misses that more than anything else. 

Her ill-fated love affair with his brother is a startling reminder that while she has tried to put Robert behind her, she is still trying to chase a feeling of excitement he brought into her life. She does not even miss him all that much, not him specifically, but more the feelings he brought out of her. She wanted to be a good wife to him, thinks that mostly she was, but she won’t ever know now, too embarrassed to go ask him.

“Morning, darling,” her father says behind her and she looks up and gives him a big smile. 

“Morning, Dad,” she says. 

He sits down beside her and like her, he understands how to enjoy the mornings in the country. 

“How often do you think Robert and Aaron met?” she bursts out and he gives her incredulous look. 

“I try not to consider Robert at all,” he says. 

She reaches for his hand and squeezes it, giving him a small smile. “Just this once, Dad, indulge me.”

He sighs. “No good can come out of thinking like that. He’s no longer in your life and won’t ever be again.”

“I see him almost every day,” she remarks. “He’s hard to miss.”

Her dad frowns. “What’s this really about, Chrissie?”

She shrugs and leans into him. “I don’t really understand, you know. I don’t think I ever did. It’s been months and I still wonder. Does that make me sad?” 

He gives her a soft smile. “No, it makes you a wronged wife.”

She wants him to have all the answers, just like he used to when she was younger. But some things even fathers don’t know anything about. She’s a mother and that was the hardest lesson of them all. 

\--

Robert’s room at Victoria’s is cramped. Aaron is up and about in the room, so Robert can’t be, instead stretching his long bare limbs half-covered by the duvet. Robert is bleary-eyed and while Aaron told him to just sleep through him leaving, Robert insisted he wake him up. 

“I’m going to miss you,” Robert says, voice quiet in the early morning. The sun, partially obscured by the flowery curtain that used to belong to Betty, makes his blonde hair seem even lighter and his freckles appear even richer. 

Aaron drops the towel onto the floor from his shower and feels Robert’s gaze as he dresses. He can hear Adam entering the bathroom in the hall, the great lump he is. “Yeah,” he says and gives Robert’s calf a reassuring squeeze. What he means is that he will miss Robert too. 

“Come here,” Robert says and stretches his arm out. 

Aaron looks at his phone for the time and decides a cuddle will be worth more than hot tea. He lies down on top of the duvet, aligning his body with Robert and runs a hand through the blonde locks. Robert lifts his head just a bit, puckering his lips with a tiny fond smirk that Aaron catches with his own lips. It’s a languid thing, this waking up in the mornings together, being together. The novelty of a sleepy Robert hasn’t worn off yet no matter how much he kicks during the night, and being able to press a sleepy kiss onto Robert’s lips before he leaves for the scrapyard is the most pleasant kind of boyfriendly thing he has ever experienced. 

“Mmh, breath mints,” Aaron sighs into Robert’s mouth. 

Robert chuckles and winds his arm around Aaron’s neck, pressing them further together. “You’ll be gone for two days,” he says softly and presses his free hand against the back of Aaron’s neck, his hair still un-gelled and unruly. “That’s two whole days without a snog.”

“We’re actual teenagers,” Aaron remarks and pushes the duvet away from Robert’s crotch, the sight of morning wood clear beneath black pants. 

“I don’t mind,” Robert gasps when Aaron pulls his pants down. 

Aaron grins when he shuts the door behind him and meets Adam in the door of the bathroom, a suspicious look on his face. 

“Let’s get going then,” Adam says with a sigh. 

The scrapyard truck trudges along the tiny windy roads, the misty country fog in the distance. Aaron’s driving and Adam’s already back asleep, his mouth open against the window and Aaron is considering grapping the plastic cup in his hand. It would be a funny sight to see Adam scald himself in the crotch, but Aaron doesn’t feel like spending most of his day in hospital. 

He switches on Adele Roberts on Radio 1 instead, the soothing rhythmic tones of early morning radio keeping his mind from buzzing about things he has no control over. 

They’re closer to Emmerdale still than Hotten when Aaron spots a parked car on the side of the road, a woman appearing seemingly out of nowhere in a fancy dress, hair in disarray and tear tracks down her cheeks. 

Aaron slows down the car and parks in front of it, letting Adam sleep on unless he needs him. 

“Thank God,” the woman says, her heels clicking on the road. “My phone is dead. I’ve been stuck here since one!”

“We don’t get much traffic,” Aaron comments. “You need help?” 

“My car just stopped,” she explains and Aaron doesn’t comment on the mascara that’s painting a pretty devastating look on her face. Her dark brown hair is halfway up and halfway pulled down. 

“Pop the hood,” he says instead. “I’m a mechanic.”

She does gratefully and stands by his side patiently while he dirties his fingers in the engine. 

“I can give you a ride into Hotten if you want,” he says. “There’s some things need changing. I can’t do that here. I know a bloke.”

“I can’t go back,” she says with a haunted look on her face. “I need to see my sister in Emmerdale. Can you take me?” 

Aaron looks at the truck and watches Adam waking up. “I’m sorry. We’ve got an important meeting.” 

She sighs. “Yeah, I suppose it’s too much to expect my knight in shining armour to have a horse as well.”

“I’m gay,” he says. 

“Oh,” she says and grins. “I’m a modern woman. My knight doesn’t need to be straight to save me.”

Aaron snorts. “What about I call up my uncle? He’s got the mechanic’s shop in the village. He’ll come get ya.”

She bumps his shoulder as he closes the hood. “That’ll work, too,” she says with a smile. 

He makes the call to Cain, appearing even grumpier than usual to be woken up before six, and swears his next five days to the garage to get him out of bed. The woman shivers. She’s been waiting for a car to drive by since after midnight, she must be cold in her fancy dress and thin shawl or whatever flimsy thing covering her shoulders. 

He hands her a spare black hoodie from his overnight bag. “No offence,” he says. “But you’ve got a bit of mascara…”

She accepts the hoodie gratefully all the while looking horrified when she spots herself in the car window. “You must think I’m crazy,” she says and rubs at her stained cheeks. 

He shrugs. “It’s not my business. Will you be all right until Cain arrives? We would stay, but…”

She waves him off. “I’m a modern woman, knight. Go!”

He nods at her and gets back into the truck. She waves as they go past and Adam demands answers. 

Aaron turns up Adele Roberts and shoots Adam a look. He’ll tell him later. 

\--

“Rebecca!” 

Chrissie runs out of the car the moment she stops and sees her sister look up from her phone plugged into a charger. 

“Chrissie!” Rebecca says and they hug. 

“What are you doing here?” Chrissie asks when they have separated and she has looked her baby sister over, spotting the fancy dress beneath a black hoodie undoubtedly on loan from Cain. 

The man himself rolls out from underneath Rebecca’s car. “Getting stuck on the side of the road,” he says and gets up, drying his grease-stained hand on an equally stained towel. 

“No one asked you, Cain,” Chrissie spits at him and he rolls his eyes. 

“I see we’re all fast friends here,” Rebecca remarks with a frown. “Can we go see Dad now?”

“Of course,” Chrissie says and links their arms. “He’s making us a feast of a breakfast. And then, young lady, you will tell me what’s happened.”

She doesn’t comment on Rebecca’s appearance, doesn’t comment on the sombre look on her face or the mascara still caked under her eyes. She wants to but Rebecca has always talked about lots and nothing at all. Chrissie knows she will talk on her own time whenever that may be. 

Lachlan waits for them at the door to Home Farm, trying in all his teenage glory to not appear too excited. Gabby is beside him, looking on curiously. It’s a strange friendship, theirs. 

Chrissie gets out of the car first. “Go inside,” she says and shoos the kids inside. “Rebecca needs a shower and then we will meet you for breakfast.”

Lachlan crosses his arms, but does as he’s told, Gabby following at a more sedate pace, looking over her shoulder as Rebecca gets out of the car. 

“Gabby,” Chrissie says sternly and the teenager goes inside, a final dirty look sent her way. 

“Thanks,” Rebecca mutters when they’re safely locked in Chrissie’s room, her large bathroom door open while Chrissie sits on the bed. “I know I looked a bit… looney.”

Chrissie tilts her head. “Do you want to tell me why?” 

Rebecca shrugs and pulls off her flimsy dress, dropping it on the floor in a pile. The black hoodie she wore when Chrissie found her at the garage is nicely folded beside her on the bed. “Not yet,” she says and steps into the shower. 

“All right,” Chrissie says with a sigh. “I’ll be downstairs.”

Chrissie watches her father and his young wife pass around each other in the kitchen with jealousy and fondness, still not quite knowing what to make of them and their ‘arrangement’. If even her dad could find love with his strange demands for a relationship, maybe there is hope for her yet. 

Maybe. 

When Rebecca finally appears, she’s dressed in relaxing clothes, black jumper and nice slacks. Compared to her earlier appearance, she looks positively shining and relaxed. Lawrence fusses over his daughters and his strange mix-match of a family eat in comfortable silence. No secret will hinder a meal with his family, he states, and gives Rebecca a warm hug. 

“I haven’t been here since the wedding,” Rebecca comments as they walk around the fields. 

“Whose fault is that?” Chrissie says and winks. 

Rebecca shrugs, looking at the ground. 

“Is it Mark?” Chrissie asks. “Is that why you are here?”

Rebecca stops and Chrissie, one step in front of her, turns around on her heel and watches the nervous energy appear around her baby sister. She’ll lie then. 

“We got into a fight,” Rebecca says and wrings her hands. “He was only home for six days this time and I thought we could make the best of it. He said all sorts.”

“Like?” Chrissie urges. 

“Just… things,” Rebecca says evasively. “Bad things. I needed to get away.”

Chrissie pulls her into a hug. “Oh you poor thing. You can stay here as long as you want.”

Rebecca is frozen in her arms, stiff. “Thanks,” she mutters and Chrissie wonders what she is hiding. 

\--

Rebecca looks too big for the village, nothing like Chrissie who revels in the country. She may not be friendly with most of the villagers, but she enjoys knowing who they are. In many ways, Rebecca is an entrepreneur like… well like Robert, brimming with energy and bigger things. 

Rebecca met Mark at a conference in New York City, a posh London lad working for a Fortune 500 company that sells… something to do with programming. They are apart more than together, living out of suitcases in various cities around the world. An exciting life some would say. Maybe Chrissie would have done the same if Lachlan hadn’t been born. Maybe she could have been happy with an absentee husband, too, barely together but still having the passion of distance. 

It’s cruel to wonder about things that can’t be changed and her and Lawrence have made a life for themselves in the village, however precarious it seems sometimes. 

“So,” Rebecca asks while Chrissie parks behind the pub. “Where does Robert live now?”

“With his sister, across the road,” Chrissie says and they both step out of the car. 

“And the boyfriend?” 

Chrissie doesn’t want to talk about Aaron, she never does, but Rebecca has listened to her moan about Robert’s affair since it came out. She deserves the right to slap Aaron across the face even if Robert deserves it more. “His mum owns the pub. He lives there,” she says with what she hopes is indifference. 

“And we’re going there for lunch?” Rebecca says scandalised. “Truly is village life, isn’t it?”

“As much as I hate to say it, Marlon Dingle is the best chef around here,” Chrissie tells her. “And I will only treat you to the best the village has to offer.”

“Hmm,” Rebecca says with a smile. “Of course, big sis. Only the best for me.”

Chas is behind the bar, sniping at Marlon about something or other. It’s a Dingle thing honestly, always fighting about something or other. It’s impressive and sometimes a bit scary. 

“Can I have some menus, please, Chas?” Chrissie asks. 

Chas gives them to her with a smile that barely reaches her lips. “Drinks?”

“White wine for the both of us.”

“Aaron’s mum?” Rebecca asks at their table in the corner. 

Chrissie nods and opens the menu. “I quite like her actually.”

Rebecca quirks her eyebrows. “Really?”

“She’s not afraid to speak her mind,” Chrissie says honestly. “It’s too bad she’s unable to see beyond her thug son.”

Rebecca snorts. 

They talk about Rebecca’s latest trip to Mexico, her favourite destination, and the would-be place of Chrissie’s own wedding had fate not intervened. It’s not until the end of the lunch rush that Robert appears with Cain, both coming from the back of the pub. It’s been happening more and more lately and it’s a clear sign that Robert has been accepted into the Dingle clan as a sort of hanger-on to Aaron. It’s company he fits in quite well, what with all of their thuggish ways and cheating and lying. 

Rebecca gets up from her chair with a determined look on her face and Chrissie doesn’t try to stop her. 

Robert sees her too late and a stinging smack can be heard through the pub that’s suddenly gone very silent. 

“Ouch,” Chrissie mutters with no real sympathy. 

Robert rubs his stinging cheek, already red from impact, and looks Rebecca over, a clear sign of recognition crossing his features. 

“Hey!” Chas calls out defensively. 

“That’s for my sister, son of a bitch,” Rebecca says clearly. 

“Rebecca,” Robert says coolly. 

“You know her?” Cain asks. “Came around to get her car fixed this morning. Woke me up early and all.”

“She’s my sister,” Chrissie says and lifts her glass of white wine. “And I think Robert deserved that, don’t you?” 

“That’s true,” Chas says and shrugs, turning around to serve a customer. 

“What are you doing here? Finally decide you weren’t better than the village?” Robert asks Rebecca with that familiar glint in his eyes that means he’s out for blood. “Lowering yourself to the lowlife countrymen?”

“That’s none of your business,” Rebecca spits at him. “That was for Chrissie, but if you don’t leave now I’m sure I have a pair of knuckles for my father.”

“Mind your own business and we’ll mind ours,” Cain speaks up. “You have no authority here, fancy lady.”

She snorts and crosses her arm. “And who are you again?” 

“The brother of the landlady, little miss,” Chas says icily. 

“Don’t talk to her like that.” Chrissie gets up from her seat and stands beside her sister with her arms crossed. She looks at her ex-husband and sees him reveling in the attention, the fight, and she wonders for a moment if she married a psycho. He killed Katie after all and he’s still standing in front of her, protected by the very people she’s fighting. 

All for Aaron. 

She hates Aaron.

“Let’s all calm down, yes,” Marlon says with a frown, coming out of the kitchen with their food. “I have your food, Chrissie. Like you ordered. You still like hot food, don’t you?”

Chrissie gives him a skeptical look. “Fine! Come on, Rebecca.”

Rebecca’s jaw is set in anger, her shoulders pushed back, and looking like she’s about to explode. Chrissie grabs her elbow and pulls her towards their table. 

\--

Chrissie’s sister smacked me across the face today, says Robert’s text and Aaron snorts. 

I’m sure you deserved it, he writes back. 

I will neither confirm nor deny this. 

“What’s got you all happy like?” Adam asks and socks him on the shoulder. 

“Ow!” Aaron winces. “What was that for?”

“Just your smitten face,” Adam says and laughs loudly, easily overshadowing the radio in the car. 

“I don’t have a smitten face,” Aaron says, but he can’t help the smile on his face. He rolls his eyes at Adam’s triumphant look and goes back to the text bubble indicating that Robert’s writing something on the other end. 

We used to be really good friends me and Chrissie’s sister. Things change don’t they.

For the better? Aaron writes back. 

Aaron has never been especially high-tech and the idea that Robert’s able to send him little moving pictures genuinely baffles him. He rather wants an engine or a circuit to fiddle through. The little picture Robert sends him proclaims to love him especially with several hearts floating around that couple from ‘The Notebook’ kissing in the rain. 

Mug, he writes back. 

Your mug, Robert sends. 

\--

It’s not until Rebecca declines wine for dinner that Chrissie finally catches on. Rebecca had hardly touched the wine for lunch either, leaving her to drive while Chrissie felt a pleasant buzz on the way home. 

She knocks on her sister’s door, seeing the faint light from it, and turns the knob softly, calling out Rebecca’s name. It’s just after midnight and Chrissie’s thoughts have been worrying about the reasons why Rebecca felt like she couldn’t tell her own sister something like that. Has she done something to push Rebecca away? Has she said something?

Rebecca is curled in a ball in her bed, a pillow tucked towards her tummy in comfort, and her back towards the door. “Go away.”

Chrissie sits on the bed, tipping Rebecca’s body just a bit in the process, and reaches out to place a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. “Whatever it is, I promise you can tell me.” 

“You’ll hate me,” Rebecca mutters. 

Chrissie rests her chin where her hand was and tries to comfort her sister the best she can, maybe even make her feel safe. She used to do the same thing when their mother was sick and Rebecca was still too young to deal with it properly. It’s a familiar position and it alerts Chrissie to extent of Rebecca’s inner turmoil. “You can tell me anything,” she says and strokes her thumb over Rebecca’s pinky in comfort. 

Rebecca whispers something and Chrissie can barely hear it. 

“You’re pregnant?” Chrissie says surprised. “Baby, that’s a good thing.” 

“It’s not,” Rebecca says miserably. “It’s not at all!”

“Why not? Did you tell Mark? Is that why you’re here?”

A sob wreaks through Rebecca’s body and Chrissie hugs her tighter. 

“Rebecca, baby, you don’t have to scared of being alone,” Chrissie whispers. “Me and Dad, we’ll help you in any way we can.”

“It’s not that,” Rebecca says. “I don’t think it’s Mark’s.”

Ice settles in Chrissie’s stomach, the familiar feel of bitterness making her feel sick. She cheated. Rebecca cheated. She’s nothing but a liar like Robert, a liar who didn’t manage to cover her tracks well enough. Whatever sympathy she felt for her sister slowly disappears and, yes, Rebecca was right. Suddenly, Chrissie hates her with a burning passion. 

“I’m so sorry, Chrissie!” Rebecca says and twists out of Chrissie’s embrace. “I needed to be honest with you. You deserve that.”

Chrissie gets up from the bed and goes to the far end of the room, leaning against it while she watches her wrecked little sister. Now that she knows she can see the bump on Rebecca’s tummy, a pronounced one that isn’t easily hidden. How she didn’t see it earlier is a mystery. 

“You’re just like Robert,” she spits at Rebecca. “You cheaters think you can get away with everything! Well, Rebecca, sorry to burst your bubble but the world doesn’t stop turning just because you were stupid enough to get pregnant!”

Rebecca cries earnest tears. “I’m sorry!” 

“Sorry? You’re sorry? I thought you were better than that!”

“What is going on in here?” Lawrence says, coming through the door with a stormy look on his face. “We can hear you all the way from downstairs shouting!”

Chrissie sucks in a heavy breath, trying to control the burning sensation in her throat and stomach. Another cheater trying to make her feel so awfully bad. Why is it always the same? Why is she always caught in the middle of it? “Rebecca is pregnant,” she says and points at her sister accusingly. 

“What?” Lawrence says, a look of wonder crossing his face when he looks towards Rebecca. “That’s amazing.”

“It’s not amazing, Dad!” Chrissie shouts. “It’s not Mark’s!”

And her dad won’t care, she knows the moment she says it. She knows it in the pit of her stomach, the way she questioned her mother’s fidelity, her father’s. He’s a family man and if the unborn child is Rebecca’s, he’s its grandfather and that is the end of that. But it matters to her and her opinion should matter. It does matter. 

“You don’t even care,” she says angrily. “Congratulations, Rebecca, for being the little sister and getting away with something again.”

“Stop playing the innocent victim here, Chrissie!” Rebecca shoots back, her face twisting from devastation to anger. “At least I wasn’t stupid enough not to see my own husband was cheating.”

“Stop it, the both of you!” Lawrence says sternly. “Rebecca, stay in your room. I don’t want to see you out of that room until tomorrow. Same goes for you, Chrissie!” 

“I’m not a child,” Chrissie bites. 

Lawrence crosses his arms. “Stop acting like it then.”

He wraps his arms around Rebecca’s shoulders and stops Chrissie from saying something else with another look. She wants to rage at him, but also doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He will dote on Rebecca like he always has, like he always will, the little sister who can do no wrong. 

She turns on her heels and stalk out of the room, meeting Bernice’s curious gaze from the other end of the corridor. “Leave me alone,” she snaps at her father’s wife and closes the door to her room with a slam. 

Her phone sits on the vanity and she watches it for a moment, trying to decide her next move. 

She picks it up. 

Rebecca is here, she writes. 

Be there tomorrow, the text replies and Chrissie smiles. 

Good. 

\--

Mark pulls up to the parking lot at the back of the pub at noon, his familiar Bentley a welcoming sight. He looks rough, his normally well-kept hair is in a disarray and his clothes rumbled. 

“Hey,” Chrissie greats him gently and gives him a big hug. “How are you feeling?” 

He shrugs. “Like my wife cheated on me,” he says with a heavy dose of irony. 

She gives his shoulder a squeeze. “I know the feeling.” 

“I suppose you do,” he says and gives her a half-smile. “What do I do now?” 

“I wouldn’t recommend torching a car, but anything else… I’ll have your back,” Chrissie says. 

“She’s your sister.”

“Doesn’t make her innocent.”

He gives her a long calculating look. “I need to tell you something,” he says. “You deserve to know.” 

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” 

He shakes his head no. “I’m sorry, Chrissie.”

\--

“I don’t remember Rebecca,” Victoria says from the kitchen with a frown. 

“She’s always doing bigger and better things,” Robert remarks. “Left the moment the wedding was over.”

“A bit like you then,” Aaron says and pushes Robert’s shoulder just a bit. Robert’s car falls over the side of the Rainbow Road and he curses in annoyance while Aaron tries not to gloat. 

“She is, actually,” Robert remarks when Adam’s attack leaves Aaron’s car to tumble over the side of the road. 

Adam wins with a triumphant shout and Aaron and Robert throws their controllers down simultaneously in annoyance. 

“I’m out,” Robert says and runs a hand over Aaron’s thigh before standing up. 

Aaron shivers, still surprised by the easy affection Robert continues to show him, even months later. Sometimes, it still feels like a joke, like he’s dreaming or something the like. He isn’t though, he thinks, and sends Robert a smile before picking the controller up again for another round with Adam. This time to win. 

He hears the kettle starting to boil and suddenly has a strong urge for a cuppa. How Robert always manages to know exactly when to do certain things is beyond him… it’s lovely, thought, completely okay.

“I’m winning this round, mate,” he tells Adam. 

“No chance,” Adam says with a grin and presses play. 

They’ve gone four rounds when someone knocks on the door with determination. 

“I’ll get it,” Aaron hears Robert say. 

The next thing he hears is a body thumping to the floor, dead weight. He gets up from the sofa quickly and jumps over it when he sees Robert lying prone on the floor with a tall dark-haired man bent over him with his fists out. 

“Hey!” he shouts and the man looks up, face twisted in anger. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Victoria shouts angrily, a pan clutched in her hands. 

Aaron looks down at Robert, seeing his disoriented stare. 

The man takes a good hold on Robert’s shirt and drags him outside. 

“Stop it, Mark!” a woman shouts. No, not just any woman but the one that Aaron called Cain for, the one who he found looking mildly crazed on the side of the road. Lawrence is behind her and a gloating Chrissie walks behind them at a more leisurely pace. 

“Stay out of this,” the man shouts. 

Robert groans and Aaron can feel Adam just behind him. He clenches his fists and collides with the man, Mark, shoulders first so they both tumble onto the grass in a tangle. Adam tears Mark off Aaron just as Mark gets his bearings enough to hit back and keeps a firm grip on him around his chest. 

“I wouldn’t try, mate,” he says and Mark stops struggling. 

Aaron gets to his feet and pulls Robert to his feet, looking him over quickly, assessing his injuries. 

“Thanks,” Robert mutters, looking worse for wear, eyes wandering over the crowd forming in the garden. 

“What’s happening?” Aaron asks quietly. 

Robert gives him a sad look. “Nothing good,” he says and gives him a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. 

\--

\--  
A few moments earlier…  
\--

“I was in Hong Kong in January,” Mark says when Chrissie has served him a pint. They’re sitting on the bench facing each other and Chrissie doesn’t want to hear the next part, doesn’t want to hear what happens next. Still she craves it like oxygen. “Becca was in London, doing something for her company. I thought I’d surprise her a bit early so we could spend a couple of extra days together. She was all over the place, you know, moody. I didn’t think much about it… but then her phone lit up while she was in the shower and I just… I didn’t mean to pry or anything…”

“Who was it?” Chrissie asks, feeling awful, remembering all the times Robert sat with his phone with that stupid grin on his face. 

“Robert,” Mark sneers. 

Chrissie closes her eyes. “Figures.” 

“Thanks for last week, it said like they were chummy or something,” Mark says. “So I asked her about it, asked why she was communicating with her sister’s cheating ex-husband. She was lying, you know. You just don’t think about until you suddenly realise it’s a cover-up. He was sad, she said, about the situation. Didn’t want them to lose contact just because you and him weren’t together anymore, said they had some business together they were working on, wouldn’t tell me the specifics.”

“Just when I think Robert is out of my life…” Chrissie says and swallows most of her wine, coughing slightly at the aftertaste. 

“The moment I saw she was pregnant; I knew it wasn’t mine. I just knew. It couldn’t have been.”

“That cheating bitch is pregnant with Robert’s baby?” she asks, voice wavering. 

He nods. 

“Does he know?” she says. 

“I don’t know,” he says. 

“Let’s make sure the whole village knows,” Chrissie says and looks at the black Polo parked in front of Victoria’s house. 

“Better yet,” Mark says and nods towards her dad’s car driving up the road. 

\--  
\--

“What have I done now?” Robert asks, spreading his arms wide in a ‘come-at-me’-move. “Lay it on me!”

“One sister wasn’t good enough for ya?” Mark shouts, moving his shoulders and jostling Adam in the process. “This is better yet though, better than the boy you’ve been shagging, better than the bloke you paid to accuse Lawrence of assault!”

“What are you even talking about? Who are you?” Victoria says outraged, still with the pan in her hand. 

“I’m Rebecca’s husband,” Mark says. “I’m Chrissie’s brother-in-law! The only one who actually cares what’s happened to her! Cos you know what, I thought my wife was a good sort of woman, the sort who sticks to their husband. Guess I was wrong, guess I found the cheating one, the one who lies! The one who slept with her sister’s fiancé, God, even husband! Do you deny it, Robert? Do you?”

Aaron sighs because he already knows, can see it in the way Robert’s hackles are rising, his temper flaring at being called out for something he doesn’t regret doing. Robert is a cheat and Aaron shouldn’t forget that. It’s selective, though, remembering. It seems Robert’s betrayal of Chrissie didn’t start with Aaron. He knows, he should have known there would be someone else, someone who could further Robert’s career. Robert is nothing if not opportunistic and putting all his faith in one sister surprisingly doesn’t seem like his style. 

“Do you want me to deny it?” Robert says and the quirk of his mouth tells Aaron more of his next move than his words. “Do you want me to tell you how she begged for it? She did.”

Mark struggles out of his hold and goes at him, fists first, but Aaron intervenes, pushing him backwards so he lands on his behind in the grass. 

“Stop talking, Robert!” the crazy from the road says and Aaron assumes it is Rebecca herself. She was going to visit her sister. She’s run and is now standing between them. “You’re not helping.”

“You’re pregnant,” Robert says with a jolt, eyes wide, the moment Aaron does as well. 

“I know,” Rebecca says, crossing her arms over her tummy self-consciously. 

\--

End part 1 (22-3-16)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so when i wrote this, rebecca was only hinted at and absolutely not confirmed. we'll see how far off i am of the mark for her characterization. but i'm getting this out before she comes on the show. hopefully, part 3 will be tied off soon too. 
> 
> also, i really want to apologize for not being very active over the summer. rhapsody actually betaed this in the spring(?) but i've lost it. here is the unbetaed version, though i looked through it like six times. 
> 
> happy reading :) please comment

\--  
PART 2

\--

“She was happily married,” Robert says with his head between his hands, his hair sticking in ten different directions from him nervously running his hands through it. “Chrissie was around more.”

“Robert, that is vile,” Victoria says, her arms crossed. “What’s wrong with ya? Chrissie’s sister?”

Robert is the only one sitting down, his eye blooming the beginnings of a deep purple. Victoria is angry and Adam has gone to the pub to keep a finger on the pulse of what else is happening. 

Aaron doesn’t know what to feel. 

“Rebecca recruited me into Lawrence’s business,” Robert continues. “I’ve known her longer. The husband, Mark – the one with the angry fists, was never around and… and it didn’t mean anything.”

“You knew she was married and you didn’t care?” Victoria says angrily. 

Robert shrugs. “It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter to Rebecca either when I took up with Chrissie.”

“You are aware of what a piece of work that makes you?” Victoria says and turns around to give Aaron a hard stare. “Did you know?”

“About Rebecca?” Aaron says and shakes his head. “No, but there were others. He told me that in a hissy fit.” 

“You’re not helping, Aaron,” Robert says, looking at him for the first time. Aaron shrugs. 

“It’s Chrissie’s sister, though. Haven’t you hurt her enough?” Victoria asks. 

“You didn’t care about me hurting her when you found out I was seeing Aaron,” Robert says bitterly. “Oh, I forgot, he’s your friend so it’s different.” 

She shakes her head. “No, it’s different because you love him and he makes you happy. Did you love Rebecca?”

Aaron blushes at her frank assessment of their complicated affair that sometimes lacked so much love and happiness that he never thought he would be content again. He remembers Robert shouting at him in the scrapyard, hurt by his rejection, saying all sorts to get a rejection that Aaron wouldn’t allow. The thing about loving Robert is that he always goes for jugular, always goes where it hurts the most, without thinking about the repercussions. 

“It’s not about love, Vic,” he says and looks at her. “He was just bored. He went after me because I told him no and he couldn’t handle being rejected. Sleeping with Rebecca and courting Chrissie at the same time. That’s a challenge, you see. A real one.” 

“Shut up, Aaron,” Robert says, his jaw clenching. 

Aaron snorts. “I’ve always known what a cheat you are. Now everyone else knows, too.” 

“And I honestly thought the affair with Katie was bad,” Victoria remarks, leaning against the wall and looking resigned. 

“Vic, can I please talk to Aaron alone for a moment?” Robert asks, voice low. 

She gives Aaron a look and when he nods that he will be okay, she leaves the living room and goes upstairs. Aaron sits down in the chair across from Robert, waiting for the other man to speak, waiting for anything, anything at all. 

“It was too much to ask,” Robert says and finally looks up at him. 

Aaron shifts a bit, leaning backwards in the chair and crossing his ankles. “How so?” he says. 

“That we could be happy,” Robert says softly. 

Aaron sighs and looks up at the ceiling. 

“It was before you told me… about your…” Robert tells him. His dad. It was before Aaron passed out in the scrapyard and Robert became a solid pillar of support unlike anything he has had before. “I was lonely and Rebecca called… we got drunk, really drunk.”

“You don’t need to explain anything,” Aaron says and he still can’t look at his boyfriend. If he does it’s still real again. The ceiling won’t hurt him. 

“I do, Aaron, of course I need to explain. You deserve that more than anything.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“She’s pregnant! Of course it matters!” Robert says and gets up from the sofa, hovering over Aaron and forcing Aaron to look at him. “What if it’s mine? What’s going to happen then? To us?”

“Her husband seems to think it’s yours,” Aaron says and gets up to face him. 

Robert is taller, but that has never mattered before. When he’s ashamed he hunches his shoulders to be on equal grounds with Aaron. He never noticed, but their arguments are less about hate now than they used to be. 

“I don’t want to be a dad,” Robert says and he sounds vulnerable. “I would be a shit dad.”

Aaron rolls his eyes. “You wouldn’t. You’d just second guess yourself too much to be any sort of effective one.”

Robert rubs his forehead again. “That makes no sense.”

“Of course it does,” Aaron says. “You just won’t admit it.” 

The silence is palpable between them for a moment and Aaron wants nothing more than to leave, put his head in the sand and forget the ugliness ever happened. But he took up with Robert Sugden and he knows what that means, said yes to it when they got together. He doesn’t want kids of his own, Liv not-withstanding, and can’t see himself as a sort of quasi step-father to another White brat – the thought of Lachlan and the Alicia ordeal still turns his stomach. 

Robert could do it, though, be a good dad. For someone who is terrible at patience, he’s got a remarkable capability for understanding. He loves so fully that whatever child would be showered with a devotion so deep that they wouldn’t know what to do with it. 

“I wish I could blame you for sleeping with her,” Aaron says, the words almost sticking in his throat. He needs to say them, though, has promised Robert never to keep it in, not if he can get it out. 

“You can blame me,” Robert says fervently, eyes pleading. “Tell me what you’re thinking, please.” 

“I can’t think, Robert! If I do, I’ll focus on the fact that you picked Chrissie’s sister out of all people!” 

Robert closes his eyes and Aaron can see he’s fighting his temper. He’s fighting his temper for Aaron because the last time he didn’t stop it he said things he can’t apologize for. 

“You’re not competing with Chrissie or her sister,” Robert says softly, or at least in a voice that isn’t laced with any hint of danger. “They can’t compete with you.” 

Aaron snorts. “It sounds a bit empty right now,” he says honestly. “I’m gunna go.”

Robert tilts his head and his eyes are sorrowful and longing, a look Aaron knows well, a look he’s seen on Robert’s face more times than he can count, when he wants something that Aaron can’t give him. 

Aaron walks past him, by the sofa, and casts one last look Robert’s way before opening the door and stepping outside, away from the drama. 

\--

The silence is icy in the living room of Home Farm.

“Start from the beginning, Rebecca,” Lawrence says from his spot on the sofa, a glass of whisky in his hand. “When… why… let’s hear it.”

Chrissie turns to look at her sister nervously standing by the entrance, her hands clenched at her sides. “The joke is on you too now, you know,” she says bitterly. “You slept with a gay man. He doesn’t even love you.” 

“Robert isn’t gay,” Rebecca speaks up. “It’s 2016, Chrissie. There is such a thing as being bisexual. You know where you like both men and women!”

“He told you more than his own wife then,” Mark remarks bitterly from across the room beside Chrissie. 

“Ex-wife,” Chrissie says from the corner of her mouth. 

“He was just really upset about that Aaron,” Rebecca says, looking at her father who rolls his eyes. “There was a lot of drinking involved and bad decisions. I’m not blameless in this, you know, I know that!”

“You still jumped into bed with him,” Chrissie says. 

“The thing about being married, I always thought, is that you communicate and talk to each other,” Mark says and Chrissie can see the anger slip out of him and sadness seeping in. He’s the victim in all of this, like Chrissie was back then when she found out her husband had been having this whole other life with a man. Mark is caught in the crossfire of Rebecca wanting something and taking it with no consideration for anyone else. 

“You’re never there, Mark!” Rebecca shouts. “You’re never there when I need you.”

“But you never said anything!” Mark shouts back. “How am I supposed to know what’s wrong with you when you don’t say anything?” 

“Pick up the phone once in a while,” Rebecca says sarcastically. “I didn’t see you at all in November and all I got was one lousy text saying you’d gone with some buddies to St. Barts.”

“You went to Australia with Louise and Martha.”

“For a week! I was home for three weeks by myself.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Lawrence says, standing up and heading straight to his liquor. “I cannot believe how incredibly selfish and irresponsible you’ve been, Rebecca. We finally managed to kick Robert out of the business and now you’ve dragged him right back in the middle. He’s a punk, a greedy selfish punk!”

“I’m not even sure it’s his. It could still be yours, Mark,” Rebecca says, eyes wide and teary. 

Mark snorts. “Yeah, because I want a child with a cheating whore.” 

“That’s enough, Mark!” Lawrence says icily. “No one I going to talk to any daughter of mine like that. Do you understand?” 

Chrissie laughs. She can’t help it, can’t stop herself from laughing from the irony of the situation. She thought she might have kids with Robert one day, dreamt of it, even though the practicality of it weighed heavily on her mind. Lachlan is trouble enough on a regular day, adding a baby to the mix would only create more trouble. Still, she thought about it because Robert loved her and did everything for her. 

She laughs because she was caught in a lie, lived in a dream reality while Aaron laughed at her behind her back. 

She laughs because Rebecca fell for it, too. And she always thought Rebecca was the clever one. 

\--

“Do you want to talk about it?” Chas asks, putting a cuppa on the table in front of him. The swirl of milk and soggy cornflakes has been keeping him occupied for the last… he doesn’t remember how long he’s been sitting in the kitchen. Enough to remember Charity and Noah fighting about school things and then… nothing. 

“It’s just, well you haven’t been sleeping alone since that whole getting-back-together-with-Robert thing happened,” Chas continues with a worried look. 

He gives her a horrified look and she grimaces. 

“Sorry, luv. It’s about time I started paying attention to my son. Better late than never, right?”

Aaron awkwardly stirs the cornflakes, trying to conjure up any sort of hunger. “Mum?” he says. 

“Yeah?” she says, giving his free hand a squeeze. 

“He slept with her the week before I collapsed in the scrapyard,” he tells her. “We weren’t even speaking. I can’t blame him for that, can I?” 

She tilts her head a bit and gives him a small comforting smile. “Do you blame him?”

“I kept pushing him away –“

“With good reason, Aaron,” she remarks. 

“Maybe I suspected he wouldn’t, but…” he says and shrugs. It’s Robert, he thinks. 

“Do you think he was lonely?” she asks softly. “He kept coming back asking for you again and again. He must have been lonely.”

“She’s pregnant, Mum.”

She pulls him into a hug. “I know, baby. I know.”

\--

He’s hiding in the garage, underneath a car where he suspects Robert will look for him last. He can hear Cain singing off-key to something on the radio, some eighties hit Aaron will tease him for some time in the future. 

“Excuse me,” someone says, someone female and he almost pushes out from underneath the car. 

“Rebecca, was it?” Cain says. 

Aaron freezes. The woman in question herself. 

“I was looking for your nephew. He borrowed me his jumper and I wanted to return it,” she says. “I didn’t know where else to look for him.”

Cain laughs. “You don’t know, do you,” he says. 

“Know what?” she asks confused and Aaron pushes out from underneath the car, the little wheels creaking underneath his weight. When she sees him she smiles. A little pleased smile because, he remembers, he was kind to her that early morning on the side of the road. 

“This is Aaron,” Cain says. “My nephew.”

Her smile freezes and turns into a frown. “But…” she says. 

“Cosmic coincidence,” Aaron tells her. “The dirty secrets of Robert Sugden.” 

“You’re Aaron. That Aaron,” she states. It’s not a question. How could it be? Cain made sure to expressly state who he is. 

“I’m gonna leave you two to it,” Cain remarks and wander off. 

She looks nothing like her sister, Aaron decides. She’s softer somehow around the eyes and the now clearly visible belly makes him the sort of uncomfortable Aaron doesn’t do well. It makes her look fragile, fertile and strong all at the same time. Maybe it’s one of those ancient cavemen tendencies roaring its ugly head, but Aaron wants to protect her from the world, from everything that wants to hurt her. Maybe it’s a combination of seeing her distraught at the side of the road and how devastated she looked when her angry husband yelled at Robert. 

Whatever she has done, she will be the one to raise the child, to care for it and connect with it. A tiny piece of her that’s growing bigger and bigger inside her. What if she came to Emmerdale to protect it? Her husband obviously went mental at the news, instantly connected the dots, and her sister is shunning her, feeling too betrayed to offer the sort of help Rebecca needs. 

“Tea?” he asks her and she nods in response. 

He flicks the kettle on in the little kitchenette and watches her fidget around the garage nervously. 

“You’re not what I imagined,” she says when he hands her the cup. 

“Right,” he says, leaning against the car he is working on, giving her a look. 

“I knew a fair bit of the other ones,” she tells him. “The other boys. Girls… all of them.” 

“Really.” 

“Eight years is a long time to know somebody. And Robert, him I know better than most.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “Do you love him?” 

“God no,” she replies. “Not in the way you think.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

She sighs and looks into the murky hot water, her shoulders hunched up around her ears. She looks almost sad and once again Aaron feels a strange urge to comfort her. “My sister. She didn’t deserve what you both did to her. No one does. But I understand why Robert tried to find comfort somewhere else. 

Chrissie is so bitter now, you know,” Rebecca says sadly. “She never used to be. Sometimes, I don’t recognize her at all. It’s like her and Dad have just become this… bitter and angry at everything.”

Chrissie has never stricken Aaron as particularly bitter. But Rebecca must know her better, know the changes that has occurred over time. Someone who would burn someone’s car in revenge and put a hit out on her ex (yeah, Robert eventually told him about that particular thing, too). Chrissie is vengeful and ruthless, but she never did strike any sort of revenge on him, not like Robert feared, not like they all thought (not like his mum kept warning him about). Lawrence on the other hand… 

“They met at my wedding, you know, Robert and Chrissie,” Rebecca keeps on, starring at nothing, possibly remembering the past. “And I thought, she’ll give him stability, a home. She just forgot to respect him.”

“He doesn’t talk much about his time away from the village,” Aaron confides in her. Quid pro quo and all that. “He just sort of avoids it.” 

A small smile crosses her lips. “Yeah,” she says wistfully. 

She knows things. He can tell, but he respects that it’s not her business to indulge in Robert’s past. It’s Robert who should confide in Aaron, like Aaron has confided in him. Still, they feel equal in their relationship, have been for months. There will always be secrets between them, but they always come out and Aaron has seen so many sides of Robert that it feels like it doesn’t matter. 

“Do you love him?” she asks him, looking up at him. 

“Yeah,” he answers honestly. 

“I’m glad.” 

And she is. She looks honest. He can sense no deceit in her. 

“And the baby?” he asks, nodding towards her abdomen. 

She hunches in on herself and runs her free hand over the top of her blouse protectively. “It’s been four months and I don’t know. I don’t know anything,” she says and the mood suddenly changes, tears welling up in her eyes and a great sob heaving through her body. “I don’t know anything at all!”

Aaron takes a step forward awkwardly, reaching out a hesitant hand and placing it on her shoulder in comfort. Instead of flinching away as he thought she would, she lurches into his arms, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face into the crook of his neck. He freezes for a long moment, wondering what to do with a crying lady, someone he hardly knows. 

They stand together for a time, long enough for Cain to come back with an interesting look on his face. Rebecca startles out of Aaron’s embrace and wipes her eyes embarrassed. 

“We’re gonna go,” Aaron tells his uncle and grabs Rebecca’s elbow. 

“You do that,” Cain says suspiciously and waves them off. 

The walk is a quick, one that hardly attracts curious eyes, but still Aaron has a strange feeling of being watched and judged like everyone should have an opinion on someone who might be carrying his boyfriend’s child. 

He snorts at his life and knocks on the door of the house he’s lead Rebecca to. 

“Aaron,” Diane says surprised when she opens the door.

“All right?” he says and nods towards Rebecca. “I need your help. This is Rebecca, Chrissie’s sis.”

Diane gives him a sharp look, but softens when she looks at the state of the other woman. “Oh pet! It’s no use being upset in your condition. Come inside. I’ll make ya some hot cocoa. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Rebecca nods without a word. 

“I’m Diane, Robert’s step-mother,” Diane says softly, opening the door wider so Rebecca can pass her. “You can rest here for a bit.”

Aaron looks after her, wondering if he should call out to her, say something meaningful, something that will help. But he doesn’t know what to say. He never does when it’s in situations like this. He’s just… useless.

Diane gives him a critical look like the one when he left his dirty socks in the bathroom in the pub, back when he saw her every day. “You coming inside, Aaron?”

“No,” he decides. “I’ve done enough.”

\--

In all the time Chrissie has known Mark, the clever posh boy Rebecca met in London five years ago, she has never known him to be quiet. He lives a full life, knows a good anecdote and talks in a steady stream to keep silence to a medium. Rebecca for all that she is clever has never been much for small talk, preferring the talk around her, watching and listening. They seemed so good for each other, so joined in their life even though sometimes they were on different continents. They communicated better than Chrissie ever did with her. She remembers envying it, thinking they had it made. 

Maybe Mark thought he had it made, too. It doesn’t seem like he’s slept for days, like the nights have been difficult and the bottle an easier friend than facing what has happened head on. She wants to reach out and touch him, comfort him because she understands the betrayal. She was Rebecca’s Maid of Honor, stood beside the happy couple as they spoke their vows forever. She stood in a church too, her hand clasped with Robert’s and promised with all her heart that it would be forever. 

She remembers now how his eyes had flickered, how the words had stumbled out of his mouth almost pained. And then Aaron had come in, looking like death… Now, it’s obvious. Back then, Robert had just seemed nervous and it had flattered her. 

Mark must be going through his own memories with his wife, analysing them painstakingly, their lives displayed like maybe it had meant nothing at all. 

Bernice’s phone rings loudly in the awkward morning silence and she jumps surprised. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s my mother.”

“Did anyone hear Rebecca come in last night?” Lawrence asks when Bernice has left the kitchen to take her call. “Lachlan?”

Lachlan shrugs. “I don’t care what Rebecca does.”

“I didn’t see her,” Gabby offers helpfully. “Maybe she stayed in the village. The B&B?”

Chrissie fills up Mark’s cup with coffee, but he doesn’t spare her a look, keeping his eyes trained somewhere far away. 

“That was Mum,” Bernice says hesitantly, coming back into the kitchen. “Rebecca stayed with her last night.”

“Thank God,” Lawrence says and relaxes his shoulders. 

“Mum took her to the surgery. Apparently, Rebecca hasn’t been to the doctors at all since she found out,” Bernice says. “She’s been too scared to go.”

That gets Chrissie’s attention. “What do you mean?” she says, suddenly feeling a shimmer of fear despite herself. “You have to go the doctors when you’re pregnant.”

“I don’t know, Chrissie,” Bernice says helplessly. “She didn’t say.”

“Great,” Chrissie says sarcastically. “Rebecca cheated on her husband, possibly got knocked up by my ex-husband and she hasn’t checked to see if the baby is all right? What is wrong with her?” she stands up and crosses her arms defiantly. “You know what? I’m done. She can sort it without me!”

“Chrissie!” her father yells after her, but she turns on her heels and storms off. 

It’s so typical that Rebecca comes into town and just absolutely messes everything up! She’s such a spoiled youngest child and she always gets what she wants, always gets the reaction out of their dad that she wants. 

She grabs her car keys and gives the weather a cursory glance, knowing that driving in the heavy drizzles outside isn’t the best idea. But the thought of staying in the house one more moment isn’t appealing either. She hates it and her father’s disappointed looks. 

The roads are slippery and she has trouble steering almost the moment she leaves the garage. Still, the thought of returning, chastised for her behavior like a child is not an appealing thought either. She wants to feel bit dangerous, a bit adrenaline-driven. She is always so safe, for her father, for her son. 

She’s so angry and presses the speeder down. 

The further she gets from Home Farm, the thicker the fog becomes. “Come on,” she mutters to herself, slowing the car down at an intersection. She should know where she is, has lived in this area for well over a year, but she’s insecure now. It all looks alike and the fog hides any landmarks she usually steers after. When she looks at her phone, the 4G symbol is gone and the signal is dangerously slow. She knows that the backroads in Yorkshire rarely gets proper signals for anything (the bill for Sky is astronomical). She’s out of options. 

She idles to the right, only speeding up a little so she can keep an eye on the road. She’s so focused on the road in front of her, speeding up more and more as her confidence grows, that she doesn’t see the deer before it crashes through her windshield.

\--

“Robert’s inside,” Adam says, greeting Aaron when he gets out of his car. 

Aaron huffs. “Of course he is. Do you think he’s seen me?” 

“Mate,” Adam says, sending him a sharp look. “It’s been three days.”

The door to the portacabin opens and Robert comes out, looking laser-focused. 

Aaron breathes in deeply and settles in for the confrontation. 

“You can’t keep avoiding me,” Robert says annoyed. “That’s not how we do things anymore.” 

“I’ve a meeting, Robert,” Aaron says wearily. “I’m already late and I ain’t got the mind for a domestic right now.” 

The frustration is clear in his expression and for a moment Aaron wonders who exactly has had to deal with his shitty mood the last three days while he’s made himself scarce. 

“A meeting is more important than us?” Robert spits angrily. 

“No, not more important,” Aaron says annoyed. “Give me space!”

“I have!” Robert says. “Three whole days.” 

Aaron rubs his forehead. “I know.”

“Then talk to me.”

He looks at Adam trying very hard not to look like he’s eavesdropping and then turns his eyes back to Robert. 

Honesty. 

He promised. Only doing it halfway isn’t what they agreed. Total complete honesty. Support and honesty. He can admit it to himself that seeing Robert here making the effort, trying, warms his heart. But at the same time there are so many conflicting feelings swirling inside him, feelings of resentment and leftover jealousy from his days as a mistress… they aren’t gone just because they’re together. 

Robert’s hair is plastered to his forehead, his green jacket growing darker with the downpour of rain from the skies. Aaron wants to crawl into his arms and let the world pass him by, forget all the things that Robert keeps on doing despite all the good. He wants to look beyond Rebecca’s pregnancy, knows objectively that he can’t be mad (jealous) about something that happened before he wanted to get back with Robert. But… feelings aren’t objective. 

“Robert,” he says softly. 

“Yeah?” Robert says, trying for that special voice of his, the one that always envelops Aaron in comfort. 

“I can’t right now. I will, I promise,” he says. “Just not right now.” 

Robert looks dumbfounded as Aaron turns away from him, forgetting about the papers in the portacabin, and gets into his car. It’s a testament to their relationship that Robert keeps mum, that he doesn’t shout things he can’t take back. Times soften wounds, Aaron knows that, and this one is lesser than so many others. Just not right now. 

He knows the backroads of the Dales like his own back pocket, but the fog quickly messes with his sense of direction. Maybe it’s the not quite anger he feels, but he quickly realises he’s lost. 

He honestly can’t remember the last time he got lost in the area. When he was younger, all there was to do in the village was to stalk the roads. Him and Clyde, they walked some miles back then, thinking of all the things he didn’t want to think or talk about. It seemed bearable in the open places of the Dales, the silence and very occasional car. 

The radio sounds horrible, unable to find the right signal, making it sound something like a cross between someone scratching their fingernails on a chalkboard and a dying machine. He turns it off annoyed and manages to throw his phone down by his feet. 

“Soddin’…” he mutters, reaching his hand down to fish around for it. It’s ringing and he can feel the vibrations on the carpet. 

When he finally manages to fish the phone up, it’s too late to swerve and he crashes directly into the car in front of him.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have a nosy at reinacadeea on tumblr. with love


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter specific info: written before liv was fully on the show, so instead of writing a character i didn't know, i sent her home to her mother because aaron needed time to fully process the trial. i'd like to think that aaron and robert got her after this fic and took proper care of her.   
> this was also written before the whole chrissie/andy thing, so in this they dated and just stopped because andy realized chrissie was only using him as a rebound. 
> 
> other than that, i did actually finish this before rebecca enters the scene this week. i'm impressed. also originally there was much more happening after the hospital, but since it's been a while i couldn't remember and decided to finish it instead of abandoning it. 
> 
> happy reading :)

\--  
PART 3  
\--

Chrissie jerks awake when something rams the car from behind and she sees the bloody head of the deer through her windshield. “Oh God!” she screams and battles the airbag to free her seatbelt. She can barely breathe and she’s slightly hysteric. She fumbles after her phone before she realises it was in the passenger seat before the crash and probably broken. 

It’s only then she realises that it’s a smoking car that’s crashed into hers. She can barely see all of it, hidden in the murky fog that caused her accident and she guesses the other car’s too. The nose is completely totaled and she can see a man in the driver’s seat, unconscious. 

“Aaron,” she realises with a start. “Aaron?”

She moves forward without thinking, opening the door and quickly looking for his pulse. It’s there, she discovers relieved. “Wake up, Aaron!” she says, shaking his shoulders, but his head just lulls forward without any sort of reaction. 

His phone starts ringing and she starts surprised. She can hear it but can’t see it, so she takes a step backwards and surveys the scene, taking a deep breath. She needs that phone. It’s under the airbag, she finally realises, probably between his legs. 

“Lovely,” she mutters to herself and struggles to inch her hand underneath the plastic and over his thigh, fumbling in places she has no desire to be. Still, necessity wins over any resentment she feels for him. It’s not important that she hates him. She doesn’t want him to die. He deserves to suffer, but not die. 

The phone stops ringing the moment she finally gets her hand on it. “Yes!” she says triumphantly. 

There are four unanswered calls from Robert on the screen she notices when she lights it up. Passcode. She doesn’t know his passcode. She gives him a helpless stare for a moment, trying for a moment to remember him celebrating his birthday, but she comes up with nothing. He’s never struck her as the birthday-celebrating sort of type anyway. She types in Robert’s birthday, but it shakes no and informs her it’s wrong. Only then does she notice the word ‘Emergency’ in the bottom left corner. 

The lady from the emergency services is efficient and comforting, though Chrissie doesn’t have the faintest idea how they are going to find her. 

“How new is your car?” the lady asks. 

“New,” Chrissie answers and leaves Aaron to check if the middle display is still working in her own car. She follows the lady’s directions to a T and feels herself calming down. Someone is counting on her, even if it is Aaron. 

While she waits for the ambulance, she sits with her back against Aaron’s totaled car, listening to him breathe while she tries to remember why she was so angry. It doesn’t seem to matter right now, not with that poor deer dead because of her. If she hadn’t left the house, the deer wouldn’t have suffered such a horrible death. 

“Why are we always casualties?” she asks herself and Aaron. 

He doesn’t reply like she knew he wouldn’t. He’s still out. 

She can hear the ambulance long before she can see it and marvels for a second about modern technology. The fog is still dreadfully thick, but they still come no matter the obstacles. It’s their job, she knows, but she still wonders at their unselfishness. It’s not something she could see herself doing… someone has to, though, she knows that much. 

“Miss?” a female paramedic says in concern when she finds Chrissie. 

“I’m fine,” Chrissie says and nods towards Aaron. “He needs help.”

The other paramedic, a man, is already checking Aaron over while the woman crouches down to check Chrissie superficially. “You might have a concussion,” she says. 

“I figured,” Chrissie says and blinks distractedly when the woman shines light into her eyes. “Can you get him out?”

The woman looks up at her partner. “It’s looks promising.”

“Good,” Chrissie says with a small smile. “Good.”

She barely notices the paramedics working until she’s ushered into the ambulance beside Aaron. She can see a police car’s blue blink and thinks for a moment that she should call someone. 

Aaron looks tiny on the stretcher, a line of worry on his forehead and she has a sudden urge to smooth it out. He’s too young to be worrying. 

“What’ your name, Miss?” the woman asks. “I’m Cara.”

“Chrissie White,” she answers. 

“Do you know who he is?” Cara says and looks down at Aaron. 

“Aaron Livesy,” Chrissie replies. “Or Dingle. I think he changed his name… I don’t remember.”

“It’s okay,” Cara says in a comforting tone of voice. “Just relax. We’ll be there soon.”

Cara picks a scissor up from somewhere and Chrissie suddenly picks up the blood coming from a gash in Aaron’s hoodie. She cuts it down the middle clinically and suddenly gasp. 

“God,” Chrissie breaks out, staring at the battlefield of scars littering Aaron’s chest. 

“There are so many of them,” Cara says in horrified wonder. “How…”

There are rumours of course, always is in a village where everyone’s business is openly displayed. Chrissie never truly believed them, not until now, not until the evidence is displayed plainly in front of her. “They’re self-inflicted,” she says. “I never thought…” 

Cara shoots her a look. “Do you know his next of kin?” 

Chrissie nods. All she can think of is Robert.

\--

Aaron wakes up just as they reach A&E, staring deliriously up at her. 

“Who do you want me to call?” she asks him. 

“Robert,” he says, voice shaky. 

She tries for a comforting smile. “Okay.”

The waiting room is crowded with a strange assortment of people sporting various low-level injuries. She moves towards the coffee machine where an elderly man is staring unseeingly at a plastic cup. She’s still holding Aaron’s phone in her hand and she looks at the new notification, noticing that Robert’s called again. She hasn’t noticed the ringing. 

She swipes it right and waits for the ringing. 

It picks up quickly and she recognizes Robert’s voice instantly. “I’m not letting you do this,” he says forcefully. “You’re so bloody stubborn sometimes…”

“Robert,” she says softly. 

“Chrissie?” he asks after a moment, confused. “Why do you have Aaron’s phone? What have you done to him?” 

“Nothing!” she says. “Intentionally,” she amends. “He asked me to call you. We’re at Hotten General.”

“What?”

“Hurry,” she tells him and hangs up. 

She rubs her forehead, trying to appease the pain between her eyes. She feels sort of dizzy all of a sudden and leans against the wall for support, heaving in a deep breath. 

“Chrissie?”

Chrissie turns around and spots Cara the paramedic looking at her worriedly. “Is it Aaron?” 

Cara shakes her head no. “You need to get checked over as well. Come with me.”

She leads Chrissie through the same doors Aaron disappeared through and is handed off to a maternal-looking nurse in scrubs. Chrissie answers her questions mechanically and is quickly given a clean bill of health, granted that she doesn’t stay by herself tonight. She laughs hysterically at that. 

The nurse leaves her alone after that and she taps her foot on the floor, staring at the interior of A&E and the six beds, some filled with patients and some not. Her gaze stops when she finds Aaron by himself in the corner, looking up at the ceiling unseeingly, and she finds herself jumping down from the bed she was checked out on. 

She walks towards him slowly, wondering for a moment why she’s drawn to him now. Maybe it’s the scars she saw or the realization that she doesn’t want him dead. Maybe it’s curiosity. She’s known him for so long, but she doesn’t know him at all, doesn’t know or understand why Robert loves him. 

He looks at her coming with a frown, his hands hidden in the paws of his jumper. 

“Hello,” she says nervously. 

He doesn’t look at bad as in the car. The colour is slowly returning to his cheeks and he’s wearing a blanket over where the paramedic cut his shirt to check his wound. He still looks vulnerable though, like he wants to hide away, burrow beneath the blanket and never resurface. 

She sits down on the chair beside his bed, perching sort of uncomfortably, because well… she feels uncomfortable. 

“What do you want, Chrissie?” he asks. 

“I…” she stammers. “I, well… I’m sorry. I think?”

He frowns. 

“Well, no,” she says. “About the accident, yes. I’m sorry that I totaled your car.”

“Right,” he says confused. “You totaled my car?”

She grimaces. “Not on purpose.” 

“Nasty wound on your forehead, though,” he tells her and her hand reaches up and touches the bandage that she barely remembers the nurse putting there. 

“I barely noticed,” she admits. “Why were you driving in the fog?”

He flinches uncomfortably. “None of your concern.” 

“Were you fighting with Robert?”

The silence between them stretches out for a long moment, the history between them stretching wide open, telling.

Aaron breathes out. “Sometimes all we do is fight.” 

“Because of Rebecca?” Chrissie asks cautiously. 

He narrows his eyes at her. “Among others.”

She bites her bottom lip, trying to keep the question on the tip of her tongue from leaving her mouth. It’s tempting though and she wants to know. It’s so far in the past now, but it bothers her, has bothered her since she found Aaron in her kitchen at Home Farm and Robert had been acting extra strange for days. She wonders what tipped the scales, what made Aaron so angry that he did it. 

Aaron is staring intently at her, waiting, and she opens her mouth but thinks again. 

“I’m sorry,” she says instead. “I’m making this awkward.”

He snorts. “Chrissie, don’t know if you noticed, but it’s always been awkward.”

She looks down at her hands. “In retrospect, yes I suppose so.” 

The sentence stretches between them, opening their history and focusing on the wounds between them. Because there are wounds between them, wounds that have bled inside her for months; she doesn’t understand and… she wants to. 

“Couldn’t you have picked someone else?” she says and it sounds almost petulant in her own ears. “I loved him so much, you know, and he didn’t love me at all.” 

“It’s been ages,” he says uncomfortably. 

“Doesn’t make the wound any less raw,” she admits and she can see his expression softening. He’s got such an exceptionally expressive face, feelings and emotions shown clearly. She spent so many months hating him because he didn’t tell her, but maybe he told her in the ten million other ways he talked to her, like when he came to convince her to take Robert back. She should have known then. “Please, Aaron,” she says. “Make me understand why he did this to me? How could he?” 

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says and hunches in on himself. 

“The truth, tell me the truth.” 

“Do you remember Donny?” 

The question comes out of left field, completely taking her by surprise. “Lachie’s father?” she says confused. 

Aaron nods. “Robert completely blew his top, ya know.”

“No, he didn’t,” she corrects him. 

“He did, Chrissie,” he tells her. “He was so angry and who do you think took the brunt of it? Who do you think has taken the brunt of his anger for the last year? You? You know nothing. Do you think I was a suspect in his shooting for nothing at all?”

“Did you? Shoot him?” she asks cautiously. 

He shakes his head no. “No, but I wanted to and trust me, he has given me enough reasons to hate him. Sometimes, I hated him so much I could hardly breathe.”

“Why are you with him, then, if you hate him so much?” 

He gives her a sad smile. “Because he’s been there when it counted, when it mattered the most.”

The sins of his father hangs in the air, unspoken.

“I knew exactly who I went to bed with,” he says. “Did you?”

\--

\--  
The Wedding  
\--  
She slips away after her third dance with her dad and makes her way over to the bar. The Shoreditch venue Rebecca set her eyes on the week after she got engaged offers a wide variety of overly pretentious drinks, just enough to make Chrissie wish for the silence of Yorkshire. She has never seen so many obnoxious pretenders in her life, but both Rebecca and Mark seems to thrive in the environment. This is the life Rebecca has chosen, a life Chrissie doesn’t want. It points out the startling differences between them. Their wishes and wants. 

She watches her father chat to a tall blonde man she has never seen before and he’s laughing comfortably, his cheeks pink from laughter and wine. The man has his hand on Dad’s shoulder and he is leaning into the touch almost like they are old friends. 

“Get me something fizzy and sweet, please,” she tells the bartender and sits on one of the high chairs. 

She watches the party around her, tired of conversing for just a moment. She just wants to watch her baby sister in her fancy expensive dress, making a fool of herself to a rousing rendition of one of the Grease songs. 

She sips her drink in peace and doesn’t see her father’s friend beside until he’s got a replica of her drink in his hand. She gives him a suspicious look. “For me?” 

“People-watching deserves a fill-up,” he says and she gives him a smile when she realises her drink is almost empty.

“You caught me,” she says. “Thank you.” 

He’s dressed in a sharp suit, but he doesn’t quite fit in with Mark’s friends either. He carries it well, though, tall and confident and she instantly feels attracted to him. 

“Who are you then?” she asks, sipping at her new drink, and giving him a coy stare beneath her lashes. She tries anyway. It’s… been awhile. 

“Robert,” he says and they shake hands formally. She feels shivers up her spine when their hands touch. “I work with your father. Account manager.” 

That explains the friendliness between them earlier, she notes. “A smoocher then?” 

He shrugs, giving her a half smile, clearly looking her over. “In not so many words.”

“I’m Chrissie,” she says. “Sister of the bride.”

They spend the night talking, sharing business stories that has her marveling at his ruthlessness and cleverness. He’s competent and brilliant, exactly all the things her useless ex isn’t. He’s exactly what she’s been looking for, almost like she’s imagining the whole thing. He cannot possibly be that perfect. 

He leaves her for about fifteen minutes, helping the bartender put her dad in a taxi, and she feels like the horrified daughter that she is. He clings to Robert, praising him for his hard work, and Robert gives her a ‘look’. In that moment, she understands him. 

Later, she finds Robert and the bartender coming out of the bathroom together and he looks at her surprised, the bartender scurrying off. 

“Do you want a nightcap?” she asks. She’s going for it. There is no way her Donny is holding her back anymore. She deserves happiness and everything about this man attracts her. She wants him and, well, she usually gets what she wants. 

\--

\--  
Present  
\--  
Robert arrives noisily. She can see him through the haze of Aaron’s revelations, the truths. She thought she saw him clearly when he yelled at her in the scrapyard (before the helicopter, before the deaths she caused). 

Aaron has shown him she only saw parts of him, things that he wanted to show her. She looks at him now, sees the worry in his eyes as he finds Aaron. She can’t define it, can’t describe the relief that washes through his body. Aaron is the only thing in his world. 

Robert stops beside the bed, frames Aaron’s face in his hands and pulls their foreheads together. “I thought…” he says and his voice is shaking. 

Aaron grips his upper arms, inches their bodies together in comfort and Robert lets him, easy as that. She feels awkward seeing the intimacy, for the first time seeing… the truth, she decides. She’s seeing the truth. 

“It was just a car accident,” Aaron says. 

Robert looks him in the eyes, his jaw set. “Are you telling me the truth?”

Aaron hesitates a moment too long and Robert takes a step back horrified. 

“Not again,” he says. “Please, not again.” 

It takes Chrissie a moment, but when she sees Robert’s eyes are trained on the wound on Aaron’s chest, she understands. 

“No…” Aaron says when he realises the same thing, pushing the blanket back up from where it’s fallen down when he hugged Robert. 

Not again, Chrissie thinks. Not again. It runs through her mind and Aaron’s words echo clearly. ‘When it mattered the most’ Aaron had said and she thought about the trial. But what if there is more? The scars. Some of them aren’t old scars. 

“You’ve got it wrong,” she says and Robert turns to give her a hard angry stare. “There was a fog… and a deer through my windshield. I crashed and he crashed into me. It was an accident.”

He laughs chillingly. “You’ve obviously never met an addict.” 

“I’m not an addict!” Aaron says, his lips thinned in anger. 

Robert sighs and closes his eyes for a moment, regrouping. “Just… don’t lie to me, Aaron,” he says softly, gently, like Aaron is the only thing in the world that matters. “Is it because of Rebecca? Liv? You can tell me. We’ll get you through it… again.”

Aaron juts out his jaw and refuses to answer. 

“Okay,” Robert says and Chrissie sees him regroup again. “We’ll talk about it when you’re ready. I’ll go find a nurse so we can get out of here.” 

Aaron doesn’t respond. He looks away stubbornly and she is left alone with him, both of them awkwardly aware of the words he spoke to her, the ramifications that she still can’t quite wrap her head around. 

When Robert comes back, Aaron says adamantly that they better drive Chrissie home, too. For what purpose she doesn’t know, except for the obvious one that he doesn’t want to be alone with the questions that Robert asked him, questions that is a problem between them. A continuous problem that they have dealt with several times, again and again. 

Robert was so scared. 

She’s alone with Robert in his car while Aaron finishes inside. Robert’s hands are clenched on the steering wheel, his jaw clenching and unclenching in anger and frustration, emotions that she has seen on him before. Rarely, but she knows them. She doesn’t want to poke the metaphorical dragon, yet she has things she wants to ask him, things that she has longed for a moment to clarify. She may never have him in a situation like this again, open and vulnerable with the shock of whatever panic he felt seeing Aaron in the hospital bed. 

“Why did you sleep with Rebecca?” she asks, going in hard. 

His hands still. “What?” he says. 

“Was it to spite me? Because of Andy?” 

He gives her another confused stare, like he can’t quite believe he’s hearing this. For a moment, she feels bad. For so long she’s felt like her heart has been broken open and battered repeatedly. She deserves to end this, to understand why Robert has done what he did. She deserves to know her part in it. 

“Just be truthful with me for once,” she pleads. “My sister is pregnant. Her marriage broken and somehow, again, it all comes down to you. Please, just understand why this is important to me.”

The muscles in his jaw is working, clenching and unclenching, until he cautiously speaks.

“One day, Liv comes home from school and, you know, we never quite got off to a good start. And she sits down in front of me and asks me if I’ve noticed Aaron hasn’t eaten for three days straight.”

An image of a surly teen with blonde hair and attitude to match with Aaron comes to mind. But she was in Emmerdale for such a short time before she’d gone again, never quite making enough of an impression on Chrissie to last. “I don’t understand,” she says confused. “What has that got to do with me?”

“Nothing,” he says sharply. “That’s the point. Turns out Aaron had been starving himself because he forgot to give Liv money for lunch.”

Suddenly, Chrissie wants to throw up. “That’s horrible.”

“That was the third time I ever saw him trying to kill himself,” Robert says and she can see his eyes reddening and can hear the strain on his voice. “I didn’t sleep with Rebecca to harm anyone. I slept with her because I was scared and she was nice. I don’t want to be the father of her child or any sort of father for that matter. It’s not about you or her for that matter. It’s about Aaron, Chrissie.”

She looks down at her hands. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that,” she says softly. “Doesn’t make what you did all right, Robert.”

“I can’t keep dwelling on all my mistakes,” he tells her. “I can only look forward.”

Aaron comes out, slowly and steadily, with a determined look on his face and gets into the passenger seat of Robert’s car. “You kill each other yet?” he asks sarcastically. 

“No,” Chrissie says. “I’m over that.”

Robert turns in his seat and gives her a calculating look. “Yeah, me too.”

Aaron crosses his arms. “Good.”

Any amount of closed quarters and the combination of the three of them has always been awkward and waiting for the next disaster. But the air is clean, Chrissie notices, and she feels her shoulders sagging like a great big weight has been sitting there for months. Maybe it’s because she understands or it’s the questions she finally asked and she actually received answers. It feels like Aaron has transformed Robert into something else, something she knew was there but couldn’t quite put a finger on. Aaron has made him better and if he is actually the father of Rebecca’s child… well, they will figure it out eventually. 

-

Epilogue   
-

“I’ve decided something,” Chrissie says softly, hesitantly making her way over to the bed where Rebecca is lying bundled among pillows and comforters, looking lifeless and grey. 

Rebecca looks surprised to see her, but moves just a little to the left so Chrissie can sit beside her. “I thought we weren’t speaking.”

Chrissie gently removes a strand of hair from Rebecca’s face and pushes it behind her ear. “Let’s just say that I got some perspective.”

“You talked to Robert?” Rebecca asks. 

“Mostly Aaron, actually,” Chrissie tells her. “Apart from the affair, he’s actually quite honest and real. I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter who the father is, not really. God knows what would have happened if Lachlan had been without his father.”

Rebecca frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, love,” Chrissie tells her baby with a soft smile. “You’ll have the child here and I’ll help you. We don’t need anyone else, do we?” 

Rebecca’s bottom lip quivers in a cross between a sob and smile. “I’d like that.”

“Good,” Chrissie tells her and it feels more important than a shitty ex-husband. 

 

End (11-10-16)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> check me out on tumblr on reinacadeea! comments are greatly appreciated! :D

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr as reinacadeea as well. hit me up here or there and say hi! hope you enjoyed.
> 
> title by zara larsson's lush life


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